The Taliban (Pashto: طالبان ṭālibān , meaning "students"), also Taleban , is a radical Sunni Islamist movement that governed Afghanistan from 1996 until late 2001, when all of its members were removed from power by NATO forces during Operation Enduring Freedom. It has regrouped since 2004 and revived as a strong insurgency movement governing at the local level and fighting a guerrilla war against the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The movement is made up of members belonging to different ethnic Pashtun tribes, along with a number of volunteers from nearby Islamic countries such as Uzbeks, Tajiks, Chechens, Arabs, Punjabis and others. They operate in Afghanistan and the Frontier Tribal Areas of Pakistan, mainly around the Durand Line border.
The Taliban movement is headed by Mullah Mohammed Omar, who is still in hiding. Mullah Omar's original commanders were "a mixture of former small-unit military commanders and madrasah teachers," and the rank and file made up mostly of Afghan refugees who had studied at Islamic religious schools in Pakistan. The Taliban received valuable training, supplies and arms from the Pakistani government, particularly the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and many recruits from madrasahs for Afghan refugees in Pakistan, primarily ones established by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI).
Although in control of Afghanistan's capital (Kabul) and much or most of the country for five years, the Taliban regime, which called itself the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan", gained diplomatic recognition from only three states: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. It has gained some amount of political control and acceptance in Pakistan's border region, but recently lost one of its key leaders, Baitullah Mehsud, in a CIA assassination.
The Taliban is today classified by security analysts as an "alternative government" in Afghanistan. It operates fifteen Sharia law courts in the country's southern provinces handling civil and commercial cases and collects taxes on harvests in farming areas. The Taliban implemented one of the "strictest interpretation of Sharia law ever seen in the Muslim world", yet still occasionally updates its code of conduct. In mid-2009, it established an ombudsman office in northern Kandahar, which has been described as a "direct challenge" to the ISAF.
Etymology
The word Taliban is Pashto, طالبان ṭālibān , meaning "students", the plural of ṭālib . This is a loan word from Arabic طالب ṭālib , plus the Indo-Iranian plural ending -an ان (the Arabic plural being طلاب ṭullāb , whereas طالبان ṭālibān is a dual form with the incongruous meaning, to Arabic speakers, of "two students"). Since becoming a loanword in English, Taliban , besides a plural noun referring to the group, has also been used as a singular noun referring to an individual. For example, John Walker Lindh has been referred to as "an American Taliban" rather than "an American Talib". In the English language newspapers of Pakistan the word talibans is often used when referring to more than one taliban. The spelling 'Taliban' has come to predominate over 'Taleban' in English.
Background
Main article: Background of the Taliban's rise to powerOrigin
The Taliban initially enjoyed enormous good will from Afghans weary of the corruption, brutality, and the incessant fighting of Mujahideen warlords. Two contrasting narratives explain the beginnings of the Taliban. One is that the rape and murder of boys and girls from a family traveling to Kandahar or a similar outrage by Mujahideen bandits sparked Mullah Omar and his students to vow to rid Afghanistan of these criminals. The other is that the Pakistan-based truck shipping mafia known as the "Afghanistan Transit Trade" and their allies in the Pakistan government, trained, armed, and financed the Taliban to clear the southern road across Afghanistan to the Central Asian Republics of extortionate bandit gangs.
Although there is no evidence that the CIA directly supported the Taliban or Al-Qaeda, some basis for military support of the Taliban was provided when, in the early 1980s, the CIA and the ISI (Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency) provided arms to Afghans resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the ISI assisted the process of gathering radical Muslims from around the world to fight against the Soviets. Osama Bin Laden was one of the key players in organizing training camps for the foreign Muslim volunteers. The U.S. poured funds and arms into Afghanistan, and "by 1987, 65,000 tons of U.S.-made weapons and ammunition a year were entering the war." FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who has been fired from the agency for disclosing sensitive information, has claimed United States was on intimate terms with Taliban and Al-Qaeda, using them to further certain goals in Central Asia. The Taliban were based in the Helmand, Kandahar, and Uruzgan region which is overwhelmingly Pashtun territory and predominantly Durranis.
Emergence in Afghanistan
The first major military activity of the Taliban was in October-November 1994 when they marched from Maiwand in southern Afghanistan to capture Kandahar City and the surrounding provinces, losing only a few dozen men. Starting with the capture of a border crossing and a huge ammunition dump from warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a few weeks later they freed "a convoy trying to open a trade route from Pakistan to Central Asia" from another group of warlords attempting to extort money. In the next three months this hitherto "unknown force" took control of twelve of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, with Mujahideen warlords often surrendering to them without a fight and the "heavily armed population" giving up their weapons. By September 1996 they had captured Afghanistan's capital, Kabul.
Consolidation of power
Under the Taliban regime, Sharia law was interpreted to ban a wide variety of activities hitherto lawful in Afghanistan: employment, education and sports for women, movies, television, videos, music, dancing, hanging pictures in homes, clapping during sports events, kite flying, and beard trimming. One Taliban list of prohibitions included:
Men were required to have a beard extending farther than a fist clamped at the base of the chin. On the other hand, they had to wear their head hair short. Men were also required to wear a head covering.
Possession was forbidden of depictions of living things, whether drawings, paintings or photographs, stuffed animals, and dolls.
These rules were issued by the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Suppression of Vice (PVSV) and enforced by its "religious police," a concept thought to be borrowed from the Wahhabis. In newly conquered towns hundreds of religious police beat offenders (typically men without beards and women who were not wearing their burqas properly) with long sticks.
Theft was punished by the amputation of a hand, rape and murder by public execution. Married adulterers were stoned to death. In Kabul, punishments were carried out in front of crowds in the city's former soccer stadium.
Spread to Pakistan
Closely tied with the JUI party in Pakistan, the Taliban received manpower from madrassas in Pakistan’s border region. After a request for help from Mullah Omar in 1997, Maulana Samiul Haq shut down his 2,500+ student madrassa and "sent his entire student" body hundreds of miles away to fight alongside the Taliban. The next year, the same religious leader helped persuade 12 madrassas in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province to shut down for one month and send 8,000 students to provide reinforcements for the Taliban army in Afghanistan.
The Taliban returned the favor, helping spread its ideology to parts of Pakistan. By 1998 some groups "along the Pashtun belt" were banning TV and videos, imposing Sharia punishments "such as stoning and amputation in defiance of the legal system, killing Pakistani Shia and forcing people, particularly women to adapt to the Taliban dress code and way of life." In December 1998 the Tehrik-i-Tuleba or Movement of Taliban in the Orakzai Agency ignored Pakistan’s legal process and publicly executed a murderer in front of 2,000 spectators Taliban-style. They also promised to implement Taliban-style justice and ban TV, music and videos. In Quetta, Pashtun pro-Taliban groups "burned down cinema houses, shot video shop owners, smashed satellite dishes and drove women off the streets". In Kashmir Afghan Arabs from Afghanistan attempted to impose a "Wahhabi style dress code" banning jeans and jackets. "On 15 February 1999, they shot and wounded three Kashmiri cable television operators for relaying Western satellite broadcasts."
Ideology
The Taliban's extremely strict and "anti-modern" ideology has been described as an "innovative form of sharia comb
Pictures of Afghanistan, Photos of Kabul, Herat, Kandahar and more
Main Category: Afghanistan Sub Category: Kabul-sep-2002 Added By AfghanSite on 8/5/2003 Picture ID: 221 Email This Picture to a Friend Main Category: Afghanistan Sub ...
Photo Gallery of Kabul, Afghanistan
Picture Gallery of Kabul, Afghanistan ( 17 th to 31st August, 2003 )
Kabul — Blogs, Pictures, and more on WordPress
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton: Briefing En Route Kabul, Afghanistan. still4hill wrote 1 day ago: This is such a beautiful picture! The SOS spoke with the press on ...
"The Salt Pit", Kabul, Afghanistan
The Salt Pit, Kabul, Afghanistan; CIA map of Afghanistan: For more Public Eye satellite imagery, see the Picture of the Week ...
Pictures of Afghanistan, Photos of Kabul, Herat, Kandahar and more
Main Category: Afghanistan Sub Category: Kabul-April-2003 Added By AfghanSite on 8/5/2003 Picture ID: 363 Email This Picture to a Friend Main Category: Afghanistan ...
Iron Chef Kabul, Afghanistan - Funny Picture
Coming this fall to the Food Network: Iron Chef, Kabul.
Bodybuilders compete in the Mr Afghanistan competition in Kabul ...
Bodybuilders compete in the Mr Afghanistan competition in Kabul. ... Website of the Telegraph Media Group with breaking news, sport, business, latest UK and world news.
A before and after picture of Paghman Gardens, Kabul Afghanistan ...
the destructive powers of the Religion of Peace. lets have a before and after of the Buddha blown up by the ROP..
Kabul, Afghanistan - Picture - MSN Encarta
Kabul, Afghanistan: The city of Kabul is located high in the mountains near the Khyber Pass, and is overlooked by the Asmai and Sherdawaza mountain ranges.
Heroin addicts in Kabul | From the Observer | guardian.co.uk ...
Heroin addicts and recovering addicts in the Afghan capital, photographed by Antonio Olmos